Perry de Havilland (London) – Samizdatahttps://www.samizdata.net
A blog for people with a critically rational individualist perspectiveFri, 09 Dec 2016 16:03:09 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.742679055The UK just legalised everything that Snowden warned us abouthttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/the-uk-just-legalised-everything-that-snowden-warned-us-about/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/the-uk-just-legalised-everything-that-snowden-warned-us-about/#commentsSun, 04 Dec 2016 22:14:09 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32373There is a good article on the Verge laying out the horrendous Investigatory Powers Act. ]]>There is a good article on the Verge laying out the horrendous Investigatory Powers Act.
]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/the-uk-just-legalised-everything-that-snowden-warned-us-about/feed/732373New £5 note is a good start but…https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/new-5-note-is-a-good-start-but/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/new-5-note-is-a-good-start-but/#commentsSat, 03 Dec 2016 16:49:21 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32356…you cannot please everyone no matter what you do, so do not even try:

Cambridge Rainbow vegetarian cafe refuses new £5 note

I would sign a petition not to remove animal products from the £5 note. Seriously. I am so through with being accommodating in oh so many ways and on oh so many issues.

If it was up to me, bank notes would all be printed on slices of bacon 😉

]]>…you cannot please everyone no matter what you do, so do not even try:

I would sign a petition not to remove animal products from the £5 note. Seriously. I am so through with being accommodating in oh so many ways and on oh so many issues.

If it was up to me, bank notes would all be printed on slices of bacon 😉

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/new-5-note-is-a-good-start-but/feed/2732356Well I must say James Mattis sounds like an interesting fellow!https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/well-i-must-say-james-mattis-sounds-like-an-interesting-fellow/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/well-i-must-say-james-mattis-sounds-like-an-interesting-fellow/#commentsFri, 02 Dec 2016 11:05:05 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32333To be honest, if his colourful quotes were intended to alarm me, they actually had quite the opposite effect.

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

– James Mattis

]]>To be honest, if his colourful quotes were intended to alarm me, they actually had quite the opposite effect.

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

– James Mattis

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/12/well-i-must-say-james-mattis-sounds-like-an-interesting-fellow/feed/4032333The Digital Economy Billhttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-digital-economy-bill/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-digital-economy-bill/#commentsMon, 28 Nov 2016 09:34:34 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32299The Bill’s intention is to create better data sharing gateways. The plans to digitise our birth, death, marriage and civil partnership certificates – which will be stored and shared in bulk – will make the sharing of our personal information as easy as clicking a mouse. There will be no requirement for them to consult you. You won’t be asked in advance, you won’t even be told after the event and you won’t have the chance to opt out.

Worried? You should be. Do you remember the ID card furore before the 2010 general election? The scheme was axed at ...continue The Digital Economy Bill]]>

The Bill’s intention is to create better data sharing gateways. The plans to digitise our birth, death, marriage and civil partnership certificates – which will be stored and shared in bulk – will make the sharing of our personal information as easy as clicking a mouse. There will be no requirement for them to consult you. You won’t be asked in advance, you won’t even be told after the event and you won’t have the chance to opt out.

Worried? You should be. Do you remember the ID card furore before the 2010 general election? The scheme was axed at great expense when public support for the plans plummeted after it was revealed that HMRC had lost personal information belonging to 25 million child benefit claimants.

Only then did the reality of how insecure our data is sink in. It’s worth noting the lost information still hasn’t been recovered almost 10 years later.

Don’t be fooled that things have improved. In 2014/15 government departments experienced almost 9,000 data breaches, according to a recent National Audit Office report.

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-digital-economy-bill/feed/632299The wicked and the wilfully blind reveal themselveshttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-wicked-and-the-wilfully-blind-reveal-themselves/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-wicked-and-the-wilfully-blind-reveal-themselves/#commentsSat, 26 Nov 2016 16:52:36 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32295Nothing however beats the BBC’s coverage. They are reporting Castro’s death more favourably than Thatcher’s. No ‘controversial’. No mention of the thousands summarily executed after the revolution. No mention that he demanded the USSR nuke the USA. No mention of the decades of impoverishment and human rights abuse. No mention of his secret police rounding up homosexuals and putting them in concentration camps. Castro gets a free pass on democratic norms – “his critics accused him of being a dictator”. Does the BBC think that is only an allegation? Particular congratulations to the BBC News Channel, who interviewed “Cuba expert” ...continue The wicked and the wilfully blind reveal themselves]]>Nothing however beats the BBC’s coverage. They are reporting Castro’s death more favourably than Thatcher’s. No ‘controversial’. No mention of the thousands summarily executed after the revolution. No mention that he demanded the USSR nuke the USA. No mention of the decades of impoverishment and human rights abuse. No mention of his secret police rounding up homosexuals and putting them in concentration camps. Castro gets a free pass on democratic norms – “his critics accused him of being a dictator”. Does the BBC think that is only an allegation? Particular congratulations to the BBC News Channel, who interviewed “Cuba expert” Richard Gott, without mentioning he was a KGB agent of influence. Slow clap.

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-wicked-and-the-wilfully-blind-reveal-themselves/feed/3232295Samizdata quote of the dayhttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-791/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-791/#commentsSat, 26 Nov 2016 01:07:44 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32276You might not have noticed thanks to world events, but the UK parliament recently approved the government’s so-called Snooper’s Charter and it will soon become law. This nickname for the Investigatory Powers Bill is well earned. It represents a new level and nature of surveillance that goes beyond anything previously set out in law in a democratic society. It is not a modernisation of existing law, but something qualitatively different, something that intrudes upon every UK citizen’s life in a way that would even a decade ago have been inconceivable […] As David Davis said, before being distracted by Brexit, ...continue Samizdata quote of the day]]>You might not have noticed thanks to world events, but the UK parliament recently approved the government’s so-called Snooper’s Charter and it will soon become law. This nickname for the Investigatory Powers Bill is well earned. It represents a new level and nature of surveillance that goes beyond anything previously set out in law in a democratic society. It is not a modernisation of existing law, but something qualitatively different, something that intrudes upon every UK citizen’s life in a way that would even a decade ago have been inconceivable […] As David Davis said, before being distracted by Brexit, this kind of surveillance will only catch the innocent and the incompetent. The innocent should not be caught and the incompetent can be caught any number of ways.

– Paul Bernal. Good article, even if I was a bit bemused by the author’s surprise that a paleo-socialist like Jeremy Corbyn acquiesced.

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-791/feed/1832276Repeal the new surveillance laws (Investigatory Powers Act)https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/repeal-the-new-surveillance-laws-investigatory-powers-act/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/repeal-the-new-surveillance-laws-investigatory-powers-act/#commentsFri, 25 Nov 2016 14:03:30 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32268If you are in the UK, please sign the petition to repeal the new surveillance laws (Investigatory Powers Act). We are half way to getting a Parliamentary debate (maybe 🙄 ).

Too many see Orwell’s “1984” not as a cautionary tale, but rather a compendium of interesting policy suggestions.

]]>If you are in the UK, please sign the petition to repeal the new surveillance laws (Investigatory Powers Act). We are half way to getting a Parliamentary debate (maybe 🙄 ).

Too many see Orwell’s “1984” not as a cautionary tale, but rather a compendium of interesting policy suggestions.

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-790/feed/2632266The tectonic plates are shiftinghttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-tectonic-plates-are-shifting/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-tectonic-plates-are-shifting/#commentsThu, 24 Nov 2016 10:43:29 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32245This is a statement by Geert Wilders about the attempts by the Dutch establishment to silence him for expressing a political opinion:

Now whatever you think of Wilders, this has been an astonishing attempt to simply shut down free expression in an western nation. And of course this will not silence him and will probably prove to be a spectacular establishment own-goal.

And in the UK, more and more infrastructure to censor internet porn is being put into place. Why is this related? Because once control infrastructure exists, it can and will be re-purposed, in much the same ...continue The tectonic plates are shifting]]>

This is a statement by Geert Wilders about the attempts by the Dutch establishment to silence him for expressing a political opinion:

Now whatever you think of Wilders, this has been an astonishing attempt to simply shut down free expression in an western nation. And of course this will not silence him and will probably prove to be a spectacular establishment own-goal.

And in the UK, more and more infrastructure to censor internet porn is being put into place. Why is this related? Because once control infrastructure exists, it can and will be re-purposed, in much the same way the Department for Education’s “counter extremism unit“, set up ostensibly to prevent violent Islamic extremist views being taught in UK schools, gets re-purposed to shut down a gay secular journalist who has not called for any violence against anyone.

All across the Western World, political verities and assumption are starting to shift, and almost nothing can be accurately predicted any more. We live in times that are a danger and opportunity in equal measure, and people who care about liberty will have to get their hands dirty, making common cause with others who will not pass any purity sniff tests but with whom we share common enemies (however care does need to be taken in such matters for sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my enemy… but sometimes not), however now is the time for engagement and action.

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/the-tectonic-plates-are-shifting/feed/4332245Samizdata quotes of the dayhttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quotes-of-the-day-3/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quotes-of-the-day-3/#commentsTue, 22 Nov 2016 22:20:05 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32215Bluntly when you’ve been called a bigot by the media and the left and you know you aren’t one, the chances are pretty high that you’ll discount the claims that others are the same. Especially when the same people also make the same false claims again and again. The activist who cried “racist” is meeting the same result as the boy who cried “wolf”.

– Francis Turner

-Racist -Sexist -Misogynist You burned those words. They carried weight, until you used them on everybody. Important words, meaningless now.

– Alejandro Argandona

]]>Bluntly when you’ve been called a bigot by the media and the left and you know you aren’t one, the chances are pretty high that you’ll discount the claims that others are the same. Especially when the same people also make the same false claims again and again. The activist who cried “racist” is meeting the same result as the boy who cried “wolf”.

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quotes-of-the-day-3/feed/1632215UK government suppressing free speech: nothing less than scandaloushttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/uk-government-suppressing-free-speech-nothing-less-than-scandalous/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/uk-government-suppressing-free-speech-nothing-less-than-scandalous/#commentsMon, 21 Nov 2016 14:12:47 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32206I have mixed feelings about Milo Yiannopoulos, but the notion that representatives of Her Majesties Government have pressured Simon Langton Grammar School in Canterbury into cancelling a speech by him on grounds of ‘extremism‘ is tantamount to a declaration of war on freedom of expression.

There needs to be push-back because this is scandalous.

Push back how? Names need to be named. Exactly who at the Department for Education was behind this? Who did Headmaster Matthew Baxter speak with? Names please. And who ordered those functionaries to contact the headmaster and press him into cancelling this event? Names please, because ...continue UK government suppressing free speech: nothing less than scandalous]]>

I have mixed feelings about Milo Yiannopoulos, but the notion that representatives of Her Majesties Government have pressured Simon Langton Grammar School in Canterbury into cancelling a speech by him on grounds of ‘extremism‘ is tantamount to a declaration of war on freedom of expression.

There needs to be push-back because this is scandalous.

Push back how? Names need to be named. Exactly who at the Department for Education was behind this? Who did Headmaster Matthew Baxter speak with? Names please. And who ordered those functionaries to contact the headmaster and press him into cancelling this event? Names please, because their reasoning needs to be subject to scrutiny.

Update: very interesting local article reporting on this. Once you get away from the London based media, you are more likely to find journalism that does not reflexively kowtow to the BBC/Guardian orthodoxy.

]]>https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/uk-government-suppressing-free-speech-nothing-less-than-scandalous/feed/3432206Samizdata quote of the dayhttps://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-788/
https://www.samizdata.net/2016/11/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-788/#commentsSun, 20 Nov 2016 16:40:40 +0000http://www.samizdata.net/?p=32204The Investigatory Powers Act legalises powers that the security agencies and police had been using for years without making this clear to either the public or parliament. In October, the investigatory powers tribunal, the only court that hears complaints against MI6, MI5 and GCHQ, ruled that they had been unlawfully collecting massive volumes of confidential personal data without proper oversight for 17 years.

– Ewen MacAskill

]]>The Investigatory Powers Act legalises powers that the security agencies and police had been using for years without making this clear to either the public or parliament. In October, the investigatory powers tribunal, the only court that hears complaints against MI6, MI5 and GCHQ, ruled that they had been unlawfully collecting massive volumes of confidential personal data without proper oversight for 17 years.